This invention relates to infant incubators and, more particularly, to handholes for gaining access to an infant positioned within the incubator.
Handholes are conventionally used with incubators and are basically small doors that are normally closed and are opened by hospital personnel so that the personnel can insert their hands into the incubator to attend to the needs of the infant. Since the incubator provides a very closely controlled environment, both as to temperature and humidity, the handholes are used instead of opening an incubator hood, thus minimizing the disruption to that controlled environment by the admission of ambient air.
One preferred characteristic of handholes is the feature of elbow-operation, that is, for convenience, the doors of handholes are generally spring loaded such that they spring open when then latch is released. The feature is particularly advantageous since personnel utilizing incubators generally prefer to merely touch the door latch with an elbow to open that door. An example of a typical handhole door operable by an elbow is described in Grosholz et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,335,713.
At the present time, the handholes are manufactured in numerous parts including individual coil springs and are assembled and installed on an incubator with considerable labor including extensive alignment to assure the proper orientation of the door with its frame and orientation of the latch as well as in positioning the handhole in proper position on the incubator hood. The handholes are thus relatively expensive to manufacture and install, both from the cost of individual parts and also the labor cost of assembly and installation.